I will make a dispraising of the province of Munster
They do not leave the floor to us;
It isn't in them to twist even a sugaun;
The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.
Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,
That they do not leave us the floor;
The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people.
They cannot even twist a sugaun!
Sheamus (coming back). Here's the hay now.
Hanrahan. Give it here to me; I'll show ye what the well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of the world directed him among the lebidins of the province of Munster, without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns. Give me a kippeen. (A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and begins twisting it; and Sheela giving him out the hay.)
Hanrahan.
There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;
She is my love; she is my desire;
She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman.
And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.
These Munstermen are blinded by God;
They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;
But she will come with me, my fine Helen,
Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.
Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal from the hangman!
The sensible Connachtman makes
A rope for himself;
But the Munsterman steals it
From the hangman;
That I may see a fine rope,
A rope of hemp yet,
A stretching on the throats
Of every person here!
On account of one woman only the Greeks departed, and they never stopped, and they never greatly stayed, till they destroyed Troy; and on account of one woman only this village shall be damned; go deo, ma neoir, and to the womb of judgment, by God of the graces, eternally and everlastingly, because they did not understand that Oona ni Regaun is the second Helen, who was born in their midst, and that she overcame in beauty Deirdre and Venus, and all that came before or that will come after her!